Living Ahimsa, or Nonviolence in Everyday Life

Non-violence is not a garment to be put on and off at will. Its seat is in the heart, and it must be an inseparable part of our being.

~ Mahatma Gandhi

I just found out today is International Day of Non-Violence. I tend to ignore International days of _______________. But usually the ones people share on facebook are the International Day of Cupcakes, so taking time to recognize a day loses some meaning after awhile. But I can get excited about a day of nonviolence. After all, it is the first of the yamas, and a discussion of ahimsa was a post back in the first year of this blog (actually on Christmas).

So why is today the International Day of Nonviolence? It is Gandhi’s birthday. Gandhi exemplifies nonviolence in a way perhaps no one else can. Without lifting a sword, Gandhi helped India achieve independence from the largest empire in the world at the time. His nonviolent revolution led to freedom movements across the world, including the civil rights movement in the United States.

That is amazing and wonderful, but while it is inspiring on one level, it is also a bit intimidating. It can be difficult to look at someone like Gandhi and not think, “I’m never going to nonviolently lead a country to independence, so how does nonviolence fit into my life?" And a day devoted to this question, if only once per year, is a great opportunity to determine this for ourselves.

It seems a bit strange that the international day of nonviolence is happening in the midst of a US presidential election, especially one filled with more vitriol than I have ever seen before. Whatever your political beliefs, or non-beliefs, it is difficult not to see and feel the violence being espoused by everyone involved. It literally pains me to witness this. But it is such a small piece of the violence consuming us these days. The news is filled with the civil war in Syria, the war in Afghanistan, and in the last two weeks, there have been two shootings in Tucson that I have heard about. And PBS is showing a film on the book, Half the Sky, which I just read, a kind of "hidden" violence happening to women and girls all over the world.

It sort of goes without saying, the world is full of violence. But if Gandhi can teach us anything, it is that we can take on seemingly insurmountable tasks with a steady focus on being nonviolent. We can bring nonviolence into our daily lives, and if more and more of us choose that path, it can be the light that ultimately penetrates the darkness.

And it need not be nonviolence in a physical, killing sense. The violence in Syria is easy to spot. We can watch the news, see people killing one another, and know that it is violence. The violence within ourselves and our daily interactions is more difficult. It is not what we traditionally consider violence. We are told that violent videogames are ones in which there are guns and blood and street fighting. But violence is also a negative word we say to someone else. It is looking at someone with contempt rather than compassion. It is treating our bodies terribly just to hide the pain.

In short, nonviolence is not a negative. It is a positive experience of working towards greater compassion, for ourselves and others. It is looking at that person with whom you are frustrated beyond belief and finding it in your heart to offer them some metta, or lovingkindness, a few words of peace. We can ensure that we stop in our moments of frustration and look to find compassion for the other person.

Nonviolence does not mean never feeling angry, upset, or frustrated. It is a commitment to recognizing those are valid emotions but we need not use them against other people or ourselves. Anger is anger. It is not a rationale for hate. Frustration is frustration. It is not a rationale for unkind words. Nonviolence is, therefore, recognizing the difference between an emotion and our response / reaction to it. Over time, if we practice conscious nonviolence, we can learn to respond with less of it and instead respond with more compassion.

And most importantly, nonviolence must start with ourselves. We are so often our own worst critic.  Our self talk, and even the ways we choose to eat and sleep and nourish ourselves must strive for nonviolence if we are going to be nonviolent with others. In some ways, the British Empire at the beginning of the 20^th century seems like small beans compared to our own internal world. But as Gandhi reminds us we must “be the change [we] wish to see in the world.”

If we want to see a world of nonviolence, we must begin with ourselves. Can you take today as an opportunity to practice nonviolence toward yourself and others?

Namaste!

© Rebecca Stahl 2012, all rights reserved. 

A Future for Others

Today is my 30^th birthday.

Generally speaking, I give no thought to birthdays. I have nothing against them, nor do I particularly care about having a special day. They are, however, a good time to stop and reflect about where we are in life, a time we have to reflect personally rather than big changes we share with others, e.g., graduations, new jobs, etc. Additionally, there are several reasons why this birthday stands out for me. 

First, I am one of the few people I know who is excited to turn 30. I think I was ready to be 30 when I was about 10, so I finally feel my age. It is also happening as I begin a new job and the first one that could be a career if I wanted it to be. It is also a decade birthday, in which we tend to think back on the past decade and reflect. 

My first thought upon reflection was, “what happened to a decade?!?!?!” After getting over the initial shock of realizing that it was ten years ago, not ten weeks ago, that I was living in a dorm at the University of Michigan, I have had some time to really think about what I have done this past decade and what I hope to do over the next one.

Briefly, my twenties went as follows: college, during which I studied abroad in France; teaching English in France; law school; learning to do yoga; working at the Pima County Superior Court; working at the Arizona Court of Appeals; becoming a yoga teacher; and getting an LLM in New Zealand. Of course there are other things, but those are the big highlights. I am struck by two things based upon that list: 1) I have been incredibly blessed, and 2) I have been fairly focused on myself.

Our society has a negative view of focusing too much on yourself. People who focus only on themselves can be seen as selfish and egotistical. One of the most difficult lessons, therefore, for me to learn from yoga was that we must take care of ourselves before we can be of service to others. We must feel secure in our own skins before trying to exist in this world, and we need to fill our own reserves, or we will have nothing left to offer others. As someone once said to me, "the heart pumps blood to itself first."

It was a difficult lesson to learn, but there is no question that I have spent a decade doing just that. All my travels, combined with the yoga, have taught me so much about who I am, what I value, and how I want to move forward. At times I felt too selfish, but deep down I knew I was preparing for something bigger and better. Interestingly, I ended up just where everyone seemed to think I would end up, but now I know I have done it on purpose rather than because someone said I should.

But what does this mean for the next ten years? It means that it is time to turn my focus to the external. This does not mean I plan to stop meditating, practicing, or even traveling; in fact those remain necessary for this next step. But it also means that it is time to use those reserves and all that information for the world. To be totally honest, I am a bit embarrassed by the list of my twenties. I feel like I could have done so much more for other people. But I also know that I can sit with people who have had to call the police on their own children or with drug addicts who have neglected their own children and feel sympathy and compassion without feeling like I have to run for my life. Some days are, of course, easier than others, but hopefully my ten years of selfish can lead to a decade of paying it forward.

And so I make this pledge in public. We all know that the best way to fulfill a promise is to ensure you are held accountable, and the best way to do that is to make it public.

Thirty seems so young and so quick, but also like a turning point. I have been incredibly blessed and have learned many lessons along the way. I know that going forward there will be days I choose myself over others, but I pledge to do it consciously and do it in order to ensure that I can be at my best when others need me. Perhaps this is one of the best ways yoga and the law intersect. It is through yoga that we strengthen our reserves to be of service to our clients and the world. 

Thank you all for sharing this journey with me, for supporting me, and for holding me accountable. I hope this blog can be a piece of my living for others. I hope it provides you with some insights and ideas about yourselves and the world in which we live, and most especially about how to take the time for yourself to be at your best at all times. Many thanks, and hopefully many more celebrations together.

Namaste!

© Rebecca Stahl 2012, all rights reserved.

A New Beginning

Welcome to 2012! I am still a bit in shock that this year has arrived. It feels like only yesterday I was writing a post about my intention (rather than resolution) to stay open to all the possibilities New Zealand held in store. Now, back in the United States, it is time to reflect on that and set a new intention for 2012, a new chapter for sure.

I wrote in the 2011 New Year’s post about not knowing where I would be living 5 days after arriving in New Zealand. I ended up being invited to stay where I lived the first four nights, and that home turned into a friendship and eventually a house-sitting opportunity. I tell this story not because it matters to anyone where I lived while in New Zealand, but it perfectly illustrates what being open to new possibilities brings into life. It brings us opportunities we never imagined possible, but that open doors to places the universe wants us to go. My 10.5 months in New Zealand was opportunity after opportunity like that. 

For me, 2012 is full of new adventures, the most obvious, of course, being the new job. As I mentioned in the first post about the new job, I have no idea how this is going to go. The first week was rough, really rough, but it was only the first week. Going forward, however, seems scary and unknowable, and not in the exciting way that was the new possibilities of a new country, especially one as beautiful as New Zealand. But there is a different kind of excitement and opportunity that comes with doing the work I have been preparing to do for nearly half of my life.

So this year’s intention is to trust myself. It was difficult to even type that. It was difficult to trust myself enough to think it possible to trust myself going forward.

But this is where the practice, the yoga, becomes the most important. For years, I have been growing the yoga bucket, filling it with tools that can hopefully work when it really matters. The real test is not whether we can practice when the going is easy. The real test is not whether we can meditate at a retreat or on a mountain top away from life. The real question is whether we can remember to respond rather than react when we feel like life is beating us over the head with a baseball bat. It is in those moments that it is most necessary to have a full yoga bucket.

And as we learn to live in a state of composure in the most difficult circumstances, we learn to trust ourselves. In many ways, learning to trust ourselves is learning to be open to internal possibilities rather than external possibilities. Rather than trusting the external world to present opportunities, we trust ourselves to know what needs to be done. So, I guess this year's intention is not so different from last year's, but the focus, the nexus is slightly different. 

For me, yoga has made trusting myself (and the universe) easier, but certainly not easy. Prior to leaving New Zealand, I had started a daily meditation practice. It was just ten minutes per day, but I can feel a huge difference having let it slide these past three weeks. That is part of my necessary yoga bucket, the refill I need to go inside enough to trust myself. So, while I do not want to make a resolution to meditate every day, I put forward this intention: to trust myself and the path I am on. I'm going to stay open to trusting the universe to present the how. 

What is your intention for this new year? Happy 2012! May the year be full of love and peace.

Namaste!

© Rebecca Stahl 2011, all rights reserved. 

The First Day

Tomorrow, I start a new job in which I will be representing children who have been removed from their parents because of abuse or neglect. 

During law school, I participated in a law school clinic focused on representing children in abuse and neglect cases. Since then, I have worked for the presiding family court judge who became the presiding juvenile court judge while I worked for her, another judge on the Arizona Court of Appeals, and done contract work for several family law lawyers. In addition, I just spent a year studying the role of lawyers for children and written a thesis about the topic.

I have been doing yoga for almost 10 years and seriously for more than five. I graduated from Yoga Teacher Training in April 2010, and I have been teaching fairly consistently since then. If it is not abundantly obvious from this blog, yoga means far more to me than asana and breathing. It is a way of life, and my years of practice have fundamentally redefined how I view each and every day. In the most general and superficial sense, yoga has helped me see life through a sense of adventure rather than a sense of fear.

So why am I so afraid to start work as a children’s lawyer? After all, as everyone keeps reminding me, “it’s the perfect job for me.”

Energetically, fear and excitement are the same. We do, however, interpret them differently. In many ways, for me, my first day doing this work is the first day I have to walk the walk rather than just talk the talk. More importantly, I have been studying and learning about children, families, abuse, and neglect for so long that now I know just how much damage can be done to a family by the lawyer taking a wrong step. I don’t want to be that lawyer.

So yes, I’m nervous. But I’m also excited. I get to work with some of my favorite people in Tucson. I get to live back in Tucson, a city I took a few years to love, and then missed terribly for the past two years. I get to be back with some of my favorite yoga people, those who first introduced me to the holistic world it has created for me. And in this economy, I get to work at all. I seem to have hit the jackpot.

This job means seeing some of the most down-and-out people in society, but it also means getting to work with them to better understand their situation and how to break free of it. This is when the yoga becomes most important. It is through yoga that I have learned to stop and notice the everyday beauty in the world, to not take anything for granted, and to be grateful each and every moment. Remembering to refill the yoga bucket is essential when so much of the non-yoga bucket will be full of discussions about abuse and neglect.

The yoga bucket will also be there to remind me that some days there is no right answer. There is, however, always a way to care. There is always a way to share your heart with a child. There is always a way to smile. Some days, that is the best we have to give, and often, that is exactly what is most necessary.

New Zealand was an amazing opportunity to learn about lawyers for children, to see a new system, and to talk to people who have done this work in one of the most progressive systems in the world for years. It was also an opportunity to see unmatched, and often untouched, beauty. Now it is time to put all these years of study and watching to the test. It is time to walk the walk.

So with fear and excitement bubbling together within me, I start a new job. I have a feeling there will be a lot of posts to come about the need for yoga in law.

Namaste!

© Rebecca Stahl 2011, all rights reserved.

The Darkest Night of the Year

December 21 was the winter solstice. In the northern hemisphere, it was the longest night of the year, while in the southern hemisphere, it was the longest day of the year. This means that two weeks ago I was going to sleep in daylight, and this week I’m eating early-bird specials in darkness. (For the record, yes I go to bed early, and no, I do not really eat early-bird specials.)

This is a roundabout way of saying that being back in the northern hemisphere has been difficult. I have had jet lag like never before, and I have had significant trouble sleeping. I also have not been doing a lot of yoga, of any variety.

Instead, I have been living out of suitcases, driving from northern California to Arizona, trying to find things I left behind a year ago, trying to catch up with friends, preparing for presentations, finishing the final bits of my thesis, and preparing to start a job on Tuesday. And even then I will be living with other people until I can move into my own place in early January.

And yes, I can feel that I have not been doing yoga. Prior to coming back to the United States, I had started and maintained a daily meditation practice for nearly three months. I took at least ten minutes per day just to sit and meditate. Somehow the northern hemisphere took it out of me. I still do a bit of mediation each day, and I attempt to meditate while standing in lines, sitting at red lights, etc. Those moments become precious. But somehow the daily practice at the same time each day faded with the daylight.

But what does the solstice have to do with any of this? It explains perfectly the body-mind connection and what happens when it gets disconnected, at least in me. My mind may be back to “normal.” It is, after all, normal to me that December is winter and the days are short. But my body is utterly confused. Although my mind never quite got used to the frost in June, the snow in August, or the spring leaves next to a Christmas tree, my body was very used to the sunlight, and ripping it out of that was not easy.

Christmas Tree in Wellington with new tree growth. 

The body being off completely threw the mind for a loop, and here I am over a week later, finally having gone to a yoga class, and finally having slept through the night. And now each day is going to get longer again. 

There is beauty in the solstice. It is a reminder that seasons change, and it reflects our own changes. But it is also a struggle. It is when the Earth is at its most extreme, and that takes a toll on each and every one of us. We are not disconnected from the Earth, and its changes affect us a great deal. Recognizing those changes is, sometimes, half the battle. For about a week, I could not figure out why I was so tired, but then I realized it was the abrupt change in seasons.

The good news is that the darkest night of the year reminds us of something else – the next day is the day when the light starts shining more each and every day. Happy Solstice, and happy holidays!

Namaste!

© Rebecca Stahl 2011, all rights reserved. 

Inspiration, Ego, and Letting Go Part 1

One day a few weeks ago I attended a yoga class taught by an Ashtanga teacher. I do not normally practice Ashtanga, but she was subbing for someone, and I have always been intrigued by it (though honestly a bit weary of its intensity). Before class began, several of us were talking about various postures, and she brought out a book by her teacher whose name escapes me. We sat in a circle looking through this book on asana simply stunned. Some of those postures looked like he needed to be missing vertebrae to be in them. It was like looking at a modern version of "Light on Yoga," which if you have not read and are at all interested in amazing asana explanation, give it a go. It remains the asana bible to many.

Flipping through this asana book with a group of non-Ashtanga students, some of whom were fairly new to yoga, instigated a discussion that has been running through my head ever since and in various forms. Interestingly, it also crossed the yoga-lawyer line. A few people bemoaned the fact that these postures looked impossible. Even though I was a student in that class, I went into teacher mode and made two remarks. First, everyone’s body is different, and that just means that there are certain postures that some people may never be able to do (a discussion for the next post). Second, I look at a book like that and find inspiration.

And so the conversation began . . . The teacher mentioned she also turns to such books for inspiration rather than a reminder of how far she has to go. 

As students, are we to look at those more “advanced” in the posture as proof that we are lesser? Are we to feel inadequate because we have not achieved as much as they have? What if we have been practicing for nearly a decade and still have injuries, pains, and fears? Does not being able to fully express a posture make someone a bad yoga student? Does it make someone a bad person?

Of course not! Quite the opposite, in fact! 

Having a posture to aspire to provides the basis for the practice. When I started doing yoga, I could barely touch my knees in a forward bend. Today, if I am warm enough, I can place my nose on my knees. But I am also that person who has been practicing for almost a decade and still has injuries, and there are other “basic” postures I can barely do, if at all. Thus, I know where to work. I know what must be done.

That is why asana books are inspirational. Yoga has helped me learn that it can take years to increase flexibility and strength, but it is possible. We can go from not understanding our bodies at all to listening to them and letting them guide us through life. We can go from no balance to Dancer. Seeing others who have gone down the path before is inspiring because it helps me see how much is possible. On the yoga mat, I understand this concept.

I find this harder in the professional world. What really inspired this post was not the discussion around an asana book, but an email from an organization I love. The new President wrote her first President’s Message, and even though I have known her for years, I was amazed at how much she has done. I wrote her an email telling her how inspiring she is. I meant it. What I left out, however, is how it was also a bit like looking at an Asana book thinking, “there is no way I could ever do that.”

The reason I came to New Zealand to study was to learn about a system that I thought was working and share it with the United States. My inspiration was to bring a model of children’s representation in custody cases to the States, to give children support during a difficult time in their lives. That same organization I love provided the inspiration, and the connections, to make it possible. But now I am here. Now I am learning. Now I am seeing how difficult it really is.

It is like standing in a forward fold with my hands on my knees thinking that the ground is a mile away. The professional world is different than a yoga mat because our actions and internal awareness cannot change others. It can seem overwhelming at times, impossible even.

But then I remember that I did not touch the floor overnight, and the new President did not become the President of an international organization overnight. Change comes in increments, slowly but surely. And change comes from within first, and then we can share it with the world and make a difference in the professional world in which we inhabit.

So we can look at the “great” practitioners, on and off the mat, and think, “I could never do that,” or we can look at them and say, “I am going to do that!” With teachers and mentors, we can begin to reach closer and closer to the floor in our forward folds and higher and higher up our dreams in our lives. The first step, though, is to see those who have come before as inspirations and not proof of how far we have left to go.

Who inspires you? Do you allow yourself to be inspired instead of paralyzed?

© 2011 Rebecca Stahl, all rights reserved

Bouncing Foot Syndrome

I first noticed it in law school. One of my professors could not sit without bouncing her foot or shaking her leg. During my summer clerkship I noticed it again with a couple of lawyers at the law firm. As we got close to graduation, my fellow students began to bounce their feet. Then I became a judicial clerk, and daily I saw lawyers come into court, sit down, and legs start to bounce. Perhaps this is just an American thing? Nope, first day sitting in court in New Zealand, and one of the lawyer’s feet were bouncing along.

So what is this cross-cultural foot bounce infusing the legal profession? Absent-minded stress!

Stress is a lot of things, but one of those is a release of hormones, a release of energy. In evolutionary terms, stress is what allows us to run away from the lion that is attacking us – the fight-or-flight response. Thus, when our stress response kicks in, we are ready to run. The problem is that we are forced to sit. We are forced to sit in long meetings, forced to sit at a desk, or forced to sit in court. As much fun as it might be, and probably good for everyone, to have a little stretch or a short walk, it is probably frowned upon to stand up in the middle of a court hearing and walk around the room. Thus, the energy has to get out another way.

Imagine one of those squishy toys, where if you squish one part, it pops out in another area. Our stress is the same way. If we do not release it the “normal” way, by running away from an attacker, it must come out another way – by tapping the foot. We become prisoners to our stress and its need to release while we try to force it to stay inside by sitting and not moving. It finds a way to move, and most of the time, we do not even notice.

Thus, it becomes absent-minded stress. We are so used to being under the stress, so used to living in a state of chronic stress, that it just becomes normal to need to get out the energy. So while we are exhausted from the overexertion, the stress hormones continue to release, and we continue to need to release them. It becomes second nature to the point where we can sit right next to someone and not even realize that we are tapping our foot at them.

Luckily, there is a way to stop this cycle, and it is actually fairly simple, though not necessarily easy. The first step is awareness or mindfulness. Ask yourself, what are your stress-induced habits? What are your nervous habits? What do you do to let out the energy when it would be uncouth to run around in circles? Once you notice the habits, notice how often you do them. Is it every time you sit down? Just in particularly stressful situations? Just when you are around one particular person?

The next step is a bit more difficult, and it involves beginning to change patterns. But if my ability to look right before I cross the street is any indication, changing patterns can be done. Once you know how and when your stress response kicks in, the next time you notice it, stop and take a deep breath. The breath moves energy, and it has the added benefit of counteracting the stress hormones and beginning to slow them down. Thus, the necessary energy is moved, and the need to continue moving energy is reduced.

This will, of course, take time to begin to change. You may find yourself taking a deep breath and tapping your foot at the same time. Most importantly here is to not stress yourself out more by getting upset. Forgive yourself and take another deep breath. Allow yourself to feel the stress reducing, and see what possibilities open. 

What stress responses do you want to change?

© 2011 Rebecca Stahl, all rights reserved

Presence of a Mountain

In the last post, I discussed the difference between living in disaster mode, as lawyers are often required to do, and living in the present, lest we create disasters within ourselves. Talking about being present, however, is different than being present. In theory, it is easy to discuss, but how do we do it?

On my Facebook page, I have a daily weekday tip, and each week has a theme / intention. This week’s intention is “remaining present.” On Wednesdays, we focus on an asana that exemplifies the week’s intention. This week’s asana is Mountain Pose or Tadasana.

Like trees, mountains have a lot to teach us, and mountain pose embodies the attributes of a mountain. Mountains are often created by earthquakes and volcanoes, the very environmental situations dominating our lives these past few weeks. The Southern Alps, running across New Zealand’s south island, have been created by the coming together of the Pacific Plate and the Indo-Australian Plate, which lie along the Pacific Rim of Fire, which has been causing all the recent activity. At any moment, these plates can create another earthquake moving the mountains and changing their structure.

But when the plates are not moving, the mountains just exist. They majestically rise up, holding steady, looking strong against the sky. While I have no research to back up the statement, I would argue that most people are awed by mountains. From Mt. Olympus, where the Greek Gods lived, to Mt. Sinai upon which Moses was provided the Ten Commandments, mountains hold a strong place in our lives and our collective stories.

In many ways, tadasana could be described as a simple pose and not very physically demanding. It could be described simply as standing. It is, however, like so much of yoga, not about outward appearance; it is about what is going on inside. Tadasana is about finding the inner strength of a mountain and rooting down through the feet, feeling deep into the Earth and then lifting the crown of your head up, straight above the spine, like the peaks of our grandest mountains. It is about finding grace and strength, all while “simply standing” and being present.

Interestingly, our greatest lesson of Tadasana may come from English. In English, “tada” is what we say when we want to call attention to something, to create fanfare but also for accomplishment and pride. It is a word of presence, of becoming present to the extraordinary. Thus, in an interesting play on words having nothing to do with mountains, the English explanation “tada” is about presence, and Tadasana, Mountain Pose, is about bringing us to the present.

Tadasana has one more purpose. It is a posture of its own, but it is also the posture from which all standing postures begin and to which we return after each standing posture. It is the place where we regroup, find our breath, and find our center. No matter where we go, whether it be a sun salutation, a balance posture, or a warrior sequence, we come back to the steady concentration of the mountain. When we are on the mat, tadasana is our home, it is our sense of presence.

Tadasana, therefore, can bring us back to the present moment at any time. We can invoke the power and grace and majesty of a mountain. No matter how scattered and crazy life gets, the mountain just gets more stable. It reaches higher to the sky with each shake of the underlying tectonic plates, and it becomes even more beautiful to view. We can embrace this power when we feel scattered, when we feel like the world is falling out from beneath us. In that moment, we can tune in, be present, and rise up like the mountain and say, “tada” I am here, I am strong, I am present.

Namaste!

© 2011 Rebecca Stahl, all rights reserved

This blog is not affiliated with Fulbright or Fulbright New Zealand, and all opinions expressed herein are my own.

Expecting Disaster

Lawyers have a lot of unique skills, but perhaps one of the best is the ability to deal with disaster. When I teach Stress Management for Lawyers, I focus a lot on the stress of what it means to live a life where your entire focus is on disaster. What do I mean by this? There are two types of lawyers – litigators and transactional (ok, there are a lot of other types as well, but these are the two most common, and the themes covered relate to others as well).

Litigators spend their lives cleaning up disasters in other peoples’ lives, from divorce to businesses gone awry to asbestos to hot McDonald’s coffee. When something has already gone wrong, people call a lawyer, and the lawyer has to find a way to clean up the mess. Transactional lawyers, by contrast, have a slightly more interesting job – imagining all the ways that disaster can strike and hopefully eliminating it from happening, either by counseling their clients correctly or by writing contracts that cannot be misinterpreted. Anyone who is a lawyer, knows lawyers, or just understands how the world works, knows that no one can clean up every disaster, and even more importantly, we cannot predict every disaster.

But lawyers continue to try . . . to do both. And it is a tough place to live.

The mind is a powerful tool. What it imagines has an effect on the body, has an effect on our lives. Research into mirror neurons (really, if you have not heard of these, check them out – fascinating) tells us that when you and I talk, the neurons inside of your head that would allow you to move your arms fire when I move my arms. In other words, what we see is what we get, and when we see disaster, we get disaster. We get stress and illness and fear and . . . well, you get the idea.

Unless you have been living in a cave, you will have noticed that the Earth is acting up a bit more intensely recently. Since the earthquake in Christchurch on 22 February, there have been four other major earthquakes, including the most recent one in Japan, and two volcanic eruptions (counting the one in Hawaii that was a change in how an already-erupting volcano is erupting now). All of this has occurred on what is referred to as the Pacific Rim of Fire.

I am currently living in New Zealand, much of my family and many friends, live in CA, and I have friends in Japan and Hawaii, not to mention Oregon and Washington. In other words, I’m a bit concerned about all this disaster and destruction. And what has happened? I have gone into lawyer mode! Yes, each step becomes a question about whether it is safer to be under the overhang or out in the street while walking. Do I leave my computer at the house when I go out? What if I cannot get back to the house? I took a hike yesterday in the trees, and at moments it was very narrow (and I was carrying a bag with my computer), and I thought, “I would fall down this cliff if an earthquake hit right now.

But then today, I took a step back. I went into yoga mode. Yogis do not live in a state of disaster-preparedness. No, yogis live in the moment. Through yoga, we focus on the breath, we focus on each moment as it unfolds, knowing that we may not know what is coming next but being fully able to enjoy and live the moment at hand. So today, while “being forced” to wait around, I took a moment and sat under a tree, and was present. I have learned a lot from tree pose, but I have learned just as much from trees. They sway in the wind, they allow their leaves to fall off in the winter knowing that they will come back in spring, and they can grow sideways when conditions require. In other words, they adapt and adjust, with no preparation.

There are all sorts of predictions about disasters, from earthquakes to the Apocalypse (for the record if anyone clicks that link, it is to some 2012 information, and I have not actually read the site, but that is what I am referencing here as a prediction, not my own beliefs about such predictions). The truth is that we have no idea what tomorrow will bring, and even if we did, we could not fully prepare for it (though Japan’s amazing building codes probably saved thousands of lives, it could not save them all). But what we can do is live our lives right now. We can tune in and recognize that life is not about preparing for and cleaning up disasters. Life is about living and about connecting. The disasters remind us that we are “one” in a moment under a table, but it is every moment when we have to live that way, lest we create a disaster within ourselves.

Namaste!

© 2011 Rebecca Stahl, all rights reserved
This blog is not affiliated with Fulbright or Fulbright New Zealand, and all opinions expressed herein are my own.

Coming home to yoga

My life has been unsettled these past few months. I have not had my own place to live since mid-December. I have traversed the date line, spent weeks in hostels and hotels, and eating out, and it has caught up to me. For the first time in years, my back is sore in ways I do not understand, and I am feeling stuffed up for no good reason. In short, I have the effects of not doing yoga.

Longtime readers of this blog know that I often talk about yoga off the mat. The entire point of this blog is about putting yoga in your everyday life. As I said in this post, yoga can and should be done anywhere by anyone. Thus, tree pose around the world was born. On my travels, I found some opportunities.

But as beautiful and fun as those opportunities were, I learned another big lesson. Although yoga can be done anywhere, we still have to make time for it, more than 5 minutes at a time. You do not need 90 minute classes everyday, but truly setting aside time for yourself, to learn the tools that you can use at all times, is essential.

I think the world of yoga, especially for lawyers looking to utilize it throughout the day, is like a bucket. You fill it up, and you continue to top it up when it begins to run low, but if you are not topping it up enough, the reserves run out, and so do its benefits. Thus, if you are doing five-minute yoga every few hours, it stays full. If you go without for a few months, the reserves run out as well.

The good thing about yoga is that you can always go back. You can start easy again, reformulating how you want yoga to look in your life and in your work. Being without for a period of time is a great way to reassess. What was really working? What was not?

As the last two posts (here and here) have discussed, patterns can get in the way of our true growth. Yoga can become a pattern, especially if you are only doing one kind of yoga, with the same teacher, or doing the same five poses at your desk each day. Forcing ourselves out of our patterns is a great way to reassess and determine how best to move forward, how best to use the practice as a benefit in the future.

So, with my sore back and stuffy nose, I am headed to a yoga class tonight with a new kiwi friend. I know nothing of the studio and nothing of the teacher, but yoga is internal. I am going to start creating a new community, something yoga and the law have both taught me is essential to growth. Hopefully, I will find new ways of integrating yoga into my life, my work, and the world.

Namaste and Blessings!

© 2011 Rebecca Stahl, all rights reserved
This blog is not affiliated with Fulbright or Fulbright New Zealand, and all opinions expressed herein are my own.

Pulling Community Together

A year ago, I posted about community and how we cannot do life alone. My year, therefore, was full of finding and building community, especially in the legal profession. From fellow family law professionals (lawyers, mediators, judges, mental health people, etc.) to other mindful lawyers, to professional women across the spectrum of professions, this year has been about growing and building a network of people with whom I connect on various levels. Professionally and personally, I feel more fulfilled as a result. As I said in the post a year ago, lawyers are really good at going it alone - I preferred law school to business school because there were no group projects (and less math, but whatever), but we learn that it takes a community to really do the work we need to do.


So after a year of community building and engaging with a wide variety of people, I am about to leave to go to the other side of the world where I have almost no community. Although it seems that everyone I know seems to know someone in New Zealand, and I know a few people down there, and Fulbright has an amazing alumni association, it is going to be different. Once again, I will be alone, at least at the beginning, starting from scratch, trying to create a new network of people in my life both personally and professionally.


This is actually the third time I have had the opportunity to live abroad. The other two times I lived in France, once as a student, and the second time as an English teaching assistant. Without going into the details and making this the longest post ever, both periods abroad helped me create new communities. It is even harder to “go it alone” when you barely speak the language where you are.


It used to be easier to never grow your community. Barely 100 years ago, even cars were barely used. Today, our community can grow instantaneously, through social networking, and we can see anyone in the world face-to-face through video chat or video conferencing. But we can still do it all from the comfort of our own offices. We can still go to networking events with at least one friend. It is human nature to want to feel safe and part of the community you already know. We would not have survived as a species had we been too open to meeting others; they could have killed our clan.


But today, the opposite is true. We are going to kill ourselves if we do not expand our communities, see “the other” as “the friend.” As I head into the great unknown, with the intention of being open to possibilities, I have asked myself what lessons I have learned from the law and yoga that will help.


As a yogi, I have learned to embrace community, to understand that my body is a teacher, and I can ask it what I need on the outside as well as on the inside. I have learned new ways of acting internally and externally from the yamas and niyamas, and I have learned to be comfortable (sometimes) with “just” sitting.


As a lawyer, I have learned that this phenomenal realm, “reality” or “the real world,” as some would call it, requires action of a different sense. While the legal system is flawed, and the catalyst for my going abroad to learn about a better system, it can only be changed by rolling up the shirt sleeves on the inside - as a lawyer. Lawyering is one type of community; the law is a community, a social contract, shall we say. And it follows its rules, but the people we are on the inside determine how we interact in the outside communities.


So this coming year is about combining all of that together, bringing together the understanding that there is no way we can do this alone, that we must interact with each other, learn from one another, and support one another, and then bringing back what is learned to create a better system here, through the grunt work of being a lawyer. But my first boss said it best, “of course yoga and the law are similar - they both strive for truth.” This year is all about finding that truth, from community to children’s representation in court. What I have learned over the year (slightly more, but not much) of writing this blog, is that we need the tools from both to make the biggest changes in our own lives and in the systems in which we interact. Our internal reflections give us the strength and insight to make the external changes, on any level.


Thank you for being part of this community with me. Here’s to a year full of possibilities!


Namaste and Blessings!


© 2011 Rebecca Stahl, all rights reserved

Do you know what's coming?

"If you can see your path laid out in front of you step by step, you know it's not your path." -- Joseph Campbell 
Lawyers like to know what is coming. Jobs that students take after their second year in law school often remain homes for years, if not an entire career. Interviews for judicial clerkships are in September for jobs beginning the following August. In interview preparation, we are coached to ask what the partnership track is for a law firm - often 7-8 years. Salaries and bonuses are posted on national websites for all to see. In other words, lawyers do not like to take chances.

Then why does the average lawyer today change jobs 5 times in his career? Why does the average lawyer leave his first job within three years? Why are so many judges people that have done both criminal and civil litigation? Certainly, part of the answer is the economy. When there are fewer jobs, people move around more. But the bigger answer, I think, is that lawyers are wising up to the importance of not knowing what tomorrow will bring. While scary, there is a certain feeling of anticipation and excitement that such an opportunity creates.

The law is about providing answers. We look to the past, see old cases and statutes, and we decide, based on that, how the case before us should resolve. Yes, I mean resolve. Because, at the end of the day, there is a resolution. One side "wins," and the other side often goes home empty-handed. In complex civil litigation, juries are often asked to determine how much at fault each party is and then calculate to the penny how much each party should be awarded. Some cases take years, but what each step will be is usually easy to determine. 

But we all know that real life is not like that. Life throws us for loops all the time. We can plan out every minute for the next thirty years, but tomorrow, we could be without a job, our best friend could die, or we could be hit by a bus. Of course, tomorrow, we could win the lottery (only if you play), meet a new best friend, or discover that someone we love is pregnant. In other words, life changes. Lawyers, like all of us, must learn to navigate those changes, and the first step is accepting that we cannot determine how life will proceed tomorrow, let alone next year.

This is why I love the Joseph Campbell quote so much. His point is that you can think you know what tomorrow, and the rest of your life, will bring, but you will be wrong, no matter what. Even Yoda said that the future is difficult to determine - always changing. (Now is probably as good a time as any to out myself as a super Star Wars geek. I will try to spare this blog from that, but sporadic Yoda quotes will prevail, I'm sure.) 

Yoga provides us the tools to confront these changes. Yoga is the reminder that our true nature does not change, even if we move across the world, change jobs, or start a new family. I have been lucky to travel the world, and live in various places for long enough for people to get to know me. What I find is that while my outward way of being has changed (I used to make Mac-and-Cheese with a friend everyday after school, and now I'm a health nut, and I used to be a percussionist prepared to study music in college, but now I'm a lawyer-yogi), people tend to react to me the same way. I hear the same things about me from people I met in France to people from Michigan and Arizona, to my friends growing up in California. This includes that which I like about myself and that which drives me nuts about myself. 

When I was growing up, many people told me I would be a lawyer. I said it would never happen. Ooops. And guess what? I'm proud of it! When I did not get the "good" jobs my third year in law school, I was upset. Then I got the best job I could have ever asked for, followed by a second amazing job, and together they gave me the time and opportunity to apply for a Fulbright and get my yoga teacher certification, neither of which are traditional plans for post-law school. I certainly could not have told anyone at the beginning of law school that I would be moving to New Zealand for ten months and teaching yoga during my lunch hour at work.

So, we can plan all we want. We can think we know what tomorrow will bring, but we waste our energy. The legal community is slowly shifting towards a system of change, of breaking the status quo, and being okay with not knowing. Yoga teaches us to always come back to our breath, whether sitting in meditation or doing a hot yoga practice (which I do not actually practice, unless you consider Phoenix hot yoga). The breath never changes. Our essence never changes, no matter how much the external forces try to change us. We can work to better ourselves and society, but the point is that there is nothing these external forces can take from us, only give us more opportunities for growth.

The funny thing is that I learned the same thing in law school. We are taught over and over again in school that it is perfectly acceptable, even honorable, to answer a client's question with four simple words, "I do not know." Of course, those words should be followed with, "let me look into it and get back to you." That openness to the unknown is a step toward the freedom that yoga can provide as well as the recognition that when we do not know, there is always an opportunity to learn. .

Namaste and Blessings!